Lost ski areaColoradoFront RangeRocky Mountains
Magic Mountain
Ran 1958–1959. A small ski hill with Colorado's first snowmaking, built in 1958 beside the Magic Mountain theme park west of Golden and gone by 1960.
Overview
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Imagery: USGS The National Map · Terrain: Mapzen, USGS and others
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Magic Mountain's ski area grew out of a theme park of the same name, which Walter F. Cobb's company built at Apex Gulch, just southwest of Golden, from 1957.1,2,3,4
Read the whole historyTodayMuch of the old ski slope has been quarried away, and Heritage Square, the park that replaced Magic Mountain, closed in 2018. (2018)1,4
Timeline
7 events · swipe
Memories
Skied Magic Mountain, or worked there?
Tell us what you remember, or what this page has wrong. Memories show here, credited to you, after we read them; facts are checked against a source before they change a figure.
Lost near Magic Mountain
The closest other lost ski areas, as the crow flies.
- 1972–1984 · 1.8 mi away · ColoradoA small night-skiing area beside Interstate 70 near Genesee, owned by Arapahoe Basin founder Larry Jump, that ran from 1972 to 1984.
- 1938–1977 · 11.6 mi away · ColoradoA small foothills ski area off Deer Creek Canyon Road in Jefferson County that began as Watson's Ski Hill and ran as Fun Valley from the mid-1960s.
- Years not yet collected · 11.8 mi away · ColoradoA ski jumping and tow hill on Denver Mountain Parks land in Deer Creek Canyon, run by the Eriksen family from Norway from the 1920s.
History
Written by aurora.ski from the 6 pages below, each sentence numbered to its sources.
Magic Mountain's ski area grew out of a theme park of the same name, which Walter F. Cobb's company built at Apex Gulch, just southwest of Golden, from 1957. The park's plans showed a ski area reached by a chairlift, but what was built in 1958, in Jackson Gulch to the south, was a smaller hill served by tows. It made its own snow, the first Colorado ski area to do so and, by the Golden Landmarks Association's account, the second in North America. Colorado Ski History gives it 700 feet of vertical, two surface lifts, a base lodge and night skiing.1,2,3,4
The skiing did well, but the park did not. Colorado Ski History dates the ski area to 1958 and 1959; the park was auctioned off in 1960, and the ski area went down with it. Its snowmaking system went to Ski Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, and The Flume says two rope tows from Magic Mountain served the Indianhead ski area, later Geneva Basin, when it opened in 1961. The Woodmoor Corporation reopened the park as Heritage Square in 1971 and built an alpine slide on Jackson Hill in 1973.1,2,3,4,5,6
TodayMuch of the old ski slope has been quarried away, and Heritage Square, the park that replaced Magic Mountain, closed in 2018. (2018)1,4
Timeline
- 1958Ski area with snowmaking built in Jackson Gulch beside the theme park1,2
- 1959Last season by Colorado Ski History's dates1
- 1960The Magic Mountain park is auctioned off, taking the ski area with it2,3,4
- 1961Two of its rope tows serve the new Indianhead ski area5,6
- 1971Woodmoor Corporation reopens the park as Heritage Square3,4
- 1973An alpine slide is built on Jackson Hill3,4
- 2018Heritage Square closes; its alpine slide had shut after 20154
Sources for this history (6)
- 1Colorado Ski History · Magic Mountain
- 2Golden Landmarks Association · Attractions that Never Were
- 3Golden Landmarks Association · The Rest of the Story
- 4Wikipedia · Heritage Square (Golden, Colorado)
- 5The Flume · What happened to Park County's ski mountains? (Meryl Phair, January 30, 2024)
- 6Colorado Ski History · Colorado Ski History Timeline 1960
Photos
No photographs of Magic Mountain we may republish yet
Its old photos and trail maps live on the sites that collected them, and Google finds the rest.
Memories
What skiers remember of Magic Mountain, in their own words.
Facts
Location
39.7128° N · 105.2142° W · Colorado · Front Range
OpenSkiMap lists it as abandoned.
Years operated
1958–1959
Closed after the 1959 season. It stays here as part of the record of U.S. ski areas.
Its numbers
all 2all 2, in one list
Terrain contours: USGS 3D Elevation Program, public domain